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Tuesday, 28 March 2017

6 Password Mistakes That Hackers Will Use Against You

Hackers are always looking for loopholes to explore in order to steal vital and sensitive information. Due to the avoidable mistakes made by many internet users, private information often falls into these wrong hands with relative ease.

A password is meant to protect a user’s account details rather than giving hackers green light to access your account.

The obvious password

This is a password that can easily be conjectured by anyone. Examples of obvious passwords are 123456 or qwerty. If you use this type of password, it’s a matter of time before someone will be snooping into your account. This snooping will not be restricted to hackers alone. Passwords are meant to be complicated and at the same time easy to remember.

Default password

The default password is one used by the manufacturer of your device which you are expected to change immediately you start using your device. However, it is surprising that some people still retain that same password. The most common default password is 1234 or 0000. Leaving your account exposed this way will come to hunt you someday if you do not change it.

Short password

The length of a password goes a long way protect you online and offline activities. The rule of thumb is the longer the password, the more you are protected. Hence, always use long passwords.

No numbers or Symbols passwords

In most cases, before your account is approved, your password must include numbers and symbols. This is the criteria. What about when you are offline? This is one password mistake that many make. If you are creating a password do not use alphabets alone but also mix it up with numbers and symbols. It will be difficult to crack for h*ckers.

Using personal details

It’s not compulsory to use your personal details when creating a password. Since using your name is a password sample that can be to have your account, it is worthwhile to use other details that cannot be simply associated with you.

Similar passwords for different accounts

This is very risky. In fact, h*ckers will have a swell time navigating through all your accounts unhindered since you virtually use the same passwords for all your accounts. It’s good practice to use different passwords for different accounts. If you cannot remember your passwords, you can write it down in a diary or use an online password reminder software to save your passwords.

Do you realise that most people use their year of birth as their ATM passwords??? Stuffs like 1991, 1986, 1980 etc…

If you are one of us , please go to the nearest ATM to change it to something that will be hard to guess…